


the coldest blood runs through my veins (but not for you)

by ninemoons42



Series: love and blades: a rebelcaptain AU [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Cassian Andor, Implied Past Relationships, Implied Relationships, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, Inspired by a Movie, Rivals to Lovers, but they become lovers anyway!, by which I mean modern era spy story violence, just the aesthetics not the actual plot, or at least they don't play for the same teams in terms of the spy games, written in the style of Casino Royale 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:38:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11325984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Jyn Erso is Agent Stardust: ruthless and brutally efficient, except where she's got a massive soft spot in the shape of Commander Cassian Andor.(To hell with being from rival intelligence agencies.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RapidashPatronus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/gifts).



> Still inspired by [You Know My Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnzgdBAKyJo), and the general aesthetics of the movie _Sólo Quiero Caminar_. (Tango with the same name [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8vp6Rpjzsg).)

Jyn Erso sleeps lightly.

Well.

Perhaps that’s an understatement.

Too many nights twitching awake at -- nothing. Nothing more than the shift of the breeze that says the rain that has been threatening to pour down throughout a long sweltering muggy day has finally decided to come pelting at her windows and onto the floor. Nothing more than the slightest vibration from her phone, and half of those false alarms turn out to be only a notification for a software update of some sort. Nothing more than the rasp of faraway conversations, or at least the sort of conversations that take place at strange hours of the morning, because people think it’s a done thing to hold conversations underneath some stranger’s wide-open windows. 

Nothing more than the fleeting caress of the world and its quick-change impressions, the world that vanishes to her steady pulse and the quiet susurrus of her breathing whenever she takes one of her weapons into her hands.

(And even the lack of a weapon is a weapon, when one is trained in several forms of martial arts.)

Too many nights falling into some bed or other, usually cold and empty, and losing consciousness for several hours only to wake with aching bones and shivering nerves -- and the echoes of screaming in the far corners of her mind. The screams of the dead (who died by her hand) and the dying (whom she can never reach in time to say goodbye).

So: sleeping lightly. She is sleeping lightly in a locked room. A locked room in some unknown rich person’s penthouse. The rich person does not know of Jyn’s presence, which only makes sense since she’d broken into the place without anyone’s permission. She knows how to bypass locks that open with keys, and she’s backed up by people who know how to bypass locks made of software. It was only a matter of time before she’d stolen her way into this rich person’s penthouse, being as it was located above the classy hotel bar where, she hopes, the duplicitous asshole she’d been entertaining during the previous night’s dinner has expired in extreme agony.

(She knows people who can bypass all manner of locks. She also knows people who can turn the lethal factor of batrachotoxin- and maitotoxin-based poisons way, way up.)

Somewhere in the lining of the coat that she’s sleeping in right now is a data drive containing that duplicitous asshole’s diaries. What a pompous piece of self-glorifying shit. But how convenient it is that the duplicitous asshole had seen fit to record all of his attempts at being a spy, because she can steal those records. She _has_ those records, and she will be turning them over to her handlers in the next few days, and then she can exact her price from them.

The price, meaning: money and other resources, so she can hide somewhere and lick her wounds and keep searching for the people who killed her parents.

(Somewhere in her gut is the suspicion that if she goes far up enough the pipeline the alphabet-soup mess of the world’s intelligence agencies will all merge into one big fucking mess.

(Somewhere in her gut she thinks that someone in that big fucking mess knows something about who killed her parents.)

What wakes her up this time, she can’t know and she can’t tell: all she knows is that one moment she’s shifting restlessly on the Egyptian cotton sheets, and the next, she’s reaching for her sidearm even before she can register that she’s waking up. The rough texture of tape on the grip and the quiet click of the well-oiled mechanisms, working, and she’s taking the safety off and the sights are aligned on the new-coming shadow in the room.

The shadow of a woman in a suit.

Moonlight, whisper of a breeze, and her eyes tell her she’s looking at a redhead.

And not just any redhead.

“You,” Jyn whispers, and pointedly keeps the gun cocked and steady.

“Me,” the redhead says as she crosses the room and takes the chair next to the full-length glass doors. They had opened onto a pool and a balcony, and a thousand-foot drop. At least that. The penthouse is on the fiftieth floor of a soaring steel-and-glass monstrosity of a skyscraper. 

Jyn chances a glance at the actual door into the room and -- it still looks locked, but since there’s someone else in this room with her now, the smart thing to do is to think that the door is already open and there’s no such thing as safety in this penthouse any more.

But she’s not going to bolt like a frightened chick before this woman, so she tightens her grip on the gun, shifts her shoulders for the flimsy reassurance of the weight of her coat, and glares. “What do you want from me?”

“Is that really any way to talk, when I’ve clearly come here to do just that -- talk?”

If anything, Jyn feels the corner of her mouth tic upwards into the beginning of a sneer. “You tell me -- you’re the one who barged in here.”

“And you stole the keys to this place from some other person. Which makes us both interlopers. Yes?”

Technicalities, Jyn thinks, and hitches her shoulder into half of a shrug. “Okay. So we’re neither of us supposed to be here. But I was sleeping and you’ve woken me up, and the very fact that you’re here, talking to me, means there’s some shit going down, or it’s about to go down. Can I go and find someplace else to hide now? I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would extend you that very same courtesy,” the redhead says. The moonlight shifts some more and now Jyn can make out the pristine white lapels, the skirt that cuts off right above the knees, the sensible pale-colored shoes with only a little heel on them. 

More importantly: open hands, empty hands.

Again, that doesn’t mean a thing, but maybe this really is just going to be some kind of conversation.

“But these are not normal circumstances. Agent Stardust -- or should I say, Agent Erso.”

“M as in Mon Mothma,” Jyn returns, and the sneer is a full-fledged thing now. “So now we know that you know who I am and I know who you are. Great. I asked you a question and you haven’t answered it. What do you want from me?”

“As it turns out, nothing.” And the woman heading the intelligence service known only as the Alliance shakes her head a little. “I am actually here to thank you.”

Jyn blinks.

“Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that what I and my people do are wholly secret from you and yours -- and vice-versa,” Mon Mothma continues. “We know what you and the Partisans do, and you know what the Alliance and I do, and that is that for our bona fides. But since I know what it is you do and specialize in, I also know that you have been doing me and mine a few good turns, and I am here to show you my appreciation.”

“Leia’s fault,” Jyn says, completely without thinking about it.

“Your handler? Yes, perhaps some of these good deeds are to be laid at her feet. But not all of them. As I have said: you are responsible for some kindnesses done to my people -- and I don’t mean that these acts were performed for your own selfish interests. I mean that you have been oddly altruistic in truth. So I am grateful for your forbearance.”

Jyn thinks over those words for a moment. “I’m not important enough to hear you say that shit -- much less to hear it right from your mouth.” She narrows her eyes with a sudden flash of insight. “Unless there’s something in it for you and you’re hiding it as, there’s something in it for me.”

“I’m afraid I have no news for you as to the one who decimated your family -- and maybe you won’t believe me, but I have myself been looking into the matter. After all, only someone very high up in ranks indeed -- or someone who has the protection of someone very high up in ranks -- can have done it and still be walking the earth with impunity.”

“Wait, you’re hunting for this person too? Because what -- they went after you.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny that,” Mon Mothma says, and Jyn can’t help herself: she snorts.

Tucks the gun away, and swings herself up into a more comfortable sitting position, away from the pillows, never more than a razor’s-edge away from springing to her feet. Turns the lights on -- but this being an overly luxurious penthouse, the lights are actually three chandeliers, crystal facets throwing scintillating flashes into every corner of the room. “Do you always talk like that? Like you’re about to be introduced to some overly formal idiots?”

“I don’t think the Queen counts as an idiot, though I might not be able to say the same for many members of Her Majesty’s cabinet,” is the reply, delivered with a barest hint of a raised eyebrow. “And perhaps there are people in my group who are too enamored of the old ways, who might decide to raise an army against me if I spoke more informally.”

“But that’s not a problem when your people are loyal to you -- I don’t mean to the agency-you. Loyal to you as in person-you.” Jyn thinks of a flash of wild dark curls, sharp dark eyes, scarlet lipstick: Shara is the only name she’s ever been able to pry from the woman, who drives all manner of engine-powered machinery like she’s competing at the highest levels of Formula One racing, and who steals state secrets with incredibly steady hands.

“I am fortunate. So, as I understand it, is your handler -- or is she still a handler now? The word is that Leia is already directing the Partisans in all but name.”

Jyn grins. Doesn’t give anything away.

“Suit yourself,” Mon Mothma says. 

And when the woman’s smile falls away, when she straightens her shoulders as if to adjust the burden under which she’s been laboring, Jyn feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise in sudden recognition.

“As delightful as it is to not-talk shop with you, I was serious about my thanks,” Mon Mothma says after a moment. “You -- will you answer a question for me?”

“No promises,” and that is Jyn’s life in a nutshell. 

“Fair enough.” Mon Mothma sighs. “You saved Cassian Andor at great risk to yourself. My question is not _why_ , but perhaps it is closer to _what’s in it for you?_ And I do not wish to hear your platitudes about -- prowess, or similar things. I know for a fact that you have left some of mine dead or dying. I also know for a fact that you have brought away those agents of your outfit and of others who were technically on your side, bringing them, or their bodies, to safety. You could have left Commander Andor to death or life or whatever fates awaited him, and you did not. What’s in it for you?”

Jyn blinks. Feels genuinely thrown. “I’ve saved his life too many times and I can’t remember which one of those you’re referring to.”

It’s not an answer to any sort of question, and she knows it. 

She knows that she doesn’t really have an answer for the question: at least, the answers that she has, don’t add up to any sort of actual “reason”.

His blood on her hands. She shudders at the thought, in the here and now -- the last time she’d had to scrub his blood off her skin was when they’d both found themselves deep undercover in a corrupt Southeast Asian government, separately brought in as shady “advisers” to some banana republic dictator-in-the-making. Documents in her hands and photographs in his, and she’d been hauled in by _another_ strongman-wannabe, disappeared from the loud boom of a street party. Strappado and waterboarding and the loss of six toenails and she hadn’t uttered a peep at the appallingly _amateur_ proceedings -- and then she’d watched them haul Cassian in.

As far as she knows, she hasn’t actually written _I lost my shit_ into her official write-ups. 

(She _did_ tell Shara, in a dead-drop email: “I know what it feels like to lose your shit over somebody.”

(And Shara had written back: “Welcome to the club.”)

The stink of cordite on his skin -- and the bitter taste of it, effaced by the musk of his sweat, the odd ocean-depths tang of his cologne, and the resinous smoke of lanterns in a jungle-themed club in some Eastern European city, such a stark contrast to the dust-stained snow outside and the dead bodies all around. That had really been a chance meeting, she thinks in the here and now, just the two of them crossing paths on their way to separate missions -- and covering up that surprise, covering up what they were really doing, two consenting adults kissing and dancing on a crowded dance floor. 

And then some idiot had declared that the club was now being shut down by order of the government.

She hadn’t been surprised when some other bigger idiot had simply gunned him down.

But she had almost gotten shot herself, genuinely caught in the crossfire, and Cassian had snatched her holdout gun from her purse. Fired, fired, and then she was grabbing his hand and running, and he’d watched her back all the way until she’d reclaimed her gun, stolen one more kiss -- 

And she remembers seeing him on that mist-shrouded cobblestoned waterfront, down to his last reserves, down to the very last knife in his considerable arsenal. 

(Blades that had been all over his body, in the aftermath, as she tried to patch him up. Sheaths in nearly every possible position in his shirt, his jacket, his trousers.)

The haunted hunted look in his eyes that she’d already seen one too many times. 

It had been a decided inconvenience to throw him into her own safehouse, because then she’d had to find one for herself, knowing she hadn’t been able to reconnoiter it beforehand.

(She still carries one of his blades tucked against her ribs, high up on her left arm, where she often presses it to the steady beat of her own heart.

(She’s wearing that purloined blade right now.)

Mon Mothma clears her throat after a moment. 

Jyn licks her lips. Meets the other woman’s eyes. 

“Perhaps your silence is the answer I was looking for,” is all Mon Mothma says, however. “He is my -- my best. One of them. Should your paths cross again, would you consider keeping him alive some more?”

“If I can.”

“Then that is all I ask.”

Jyn holds herself still as Mon Mothma gets to her feet and stalks toward the door. 

Click of multiple locks engaging, but she also hears the footsteps of several other people -- escorts, naturally, who else could they be.

And when she finally heaves herself to her feet, when she finally gets ready to run -- no sense wasting these hours, since she’s not going to be able to go back to sleep -- there’s something left on the table next to the chair Mon Mothma was sitting in.

The palm-sized gadget is easy to recognize: it’s a document reader of some sort.

And, bundled with the document reader, three pieces of microfiche.

She drops those two items into the pockets of her coat, and doesn’t let herself think about them, even as she sanitizes the room -- not even as she heads for one of the Partisans’ regular drop points to complete her mission.

It takes her a moment to decide which bolthole she needs to head for next: but that’s easy, in a way. 

Home, for a given value of home.


	2. Chapter 2

All things considered: he finds himself on the doorstep of an ordinary New York City brownstone, sleepy and surprised and wondering if he’s finally gone around the bend.

At Mon Mothma’s request, he’s been conducting surveillance on the neighborhood, and so far he’s found evidence of maybe one or two enhanced/advanced/gifted/whatever the fuck the agency’s now calling those beings who’ve been born with maybe one or two or a hundred superhuman abilities. One disgruntled employee in the office of a particularly shit-for-brains senator, who might not actually need any persuasion to start leaking things. Seven happy families, and an absurd surplus of cute dogs and cats and birds and even one happy-with-its-plodding-lot-in-life tortoise.

But this is also, apparently, one of the places where Jyn Erso hangs her hat.

The real question is, what the hell is he doing here, Cassian thinks.

The strange chime of a ringing bell doesn’t make him jump, but it does make him glance warily over his shoulder: over his shoulder at the ice-cream truck that is making its slow way up the narrow street. It’s greeted by the shouts of little children, coming from the windows towering over him; across the way, someone -- a much older someone -- calls, “Stella, how many sandwiches?” 

“Half a dozen, and get the pistachio ones if they have ’em!”

Cassian watches as a tall, burly stranger emerges onto the front step of the apartment building several feet away -- watches him pop the collar of his peacoat and saunter down to the sidewalk, and unless Cassian’s missing his guess, the man’s been in some kind of armed service because he’s very nearly marching down to the ice-cream truck. Long dark hair, its straggling ends lifting just a little in the wan breeze; stubble and gloves and a piercing look in the dark eyes.

For some reason he can’t help but think that the man in the peacoat looks terribly familiar.

The ice-cream truck makes its slow way down the street.

And just as Cassian makes up his mind to knock on the door and ask for Jyn -- he hopes she’s here under that name -- that same door opens with a crash and he’s looking straight into Jyn’s eyes.

He blinks.

Watches her blink.

And then she laughs, and cocks her head in the direction of the ringing bell. “Want ice cream?”

He hears himself blurt out, “I’ll buy you some.”

Jyn laughs some more, and there’s a particular quirk in her eyebrow that makes him think that maybe she wants him to laugh _with_ her -- so he tries on a smile.

Her response is thoroughly _her_ , at least the “her” that he knows: her hand hard like an iron band around his wrist, and her steps pulling him after her, down to the sidewalk and past the man in the peacoat and up to the smiling old lady in the ice-cream truck.

“Pint of coffee cookie-dough, please,” Jyn says, “and he’ll have the triple berry.”

Strawberries in ice cream -- he thinks of the heavy, custard-based ice creams of home, and the pint in his hands is colored in several vibrant pinks and purples, and he stares at it and then at her, completely confused, because she’s already digging into her pint and he doesn’t know where her spoon came from.

“That’ll be twenty,” the old lady says, with an indulgent smile.

Cassian pulls the crumpled bill from his pocket and drops a handful of change into the tip jar, and gets a delighted laugh for his troubles, and then he’s helpless to do anything else but turn to Jyn and take the spoon right out of her hand.

“Hey,” she says, but only mildly.

Still, there is a deep furrow between her eyebrows, as if she’s thinking very hard, or as if she’s trying to strategize, and this street is no place to talk about whatever it is that they actually do when they’re out in the real world -- so he tastes his ice cream and then says, “Can we talk upstairs?”

“I don’t even know what you’re doing here,” she says.

“I -- I can explain. Sort of.”

“Reassuring,” Jyn says, but she leads him through a door, up a series of steps, and through another door, and --

Of course she lives in an apartment that looks like it came straight out of an interior-design magazine. White upholstery everywhere and soft plush rugs underfoot. Hard to believe that the desks and tables and bookshelves hold actual items on them, because they seem to be, of a piece, all spindly and emaciated.

“You don’t stay here a lot, do you,” he asks, still absently eating his ice cream.

“Not there, no,” Jyn says, from somewhere else, and he follows the sound of her voice to two more rooms in the very back.

She is leaning against the very short stretch of wall between two open doorways. On the left, mismatched tiles to waist-height all the way around the perimeter, clashing blues and greens and grays against long steel surfaces. Refrigerator, stove, gleaming counter tops, a galaxy of pots and pans hanging from racks, and wooden cabinets all around. The ceiling is so high over his head that he turns around wildly, looking for the ladder that must have come with this place -- and it’s there, over in the north corner, a wooden triangle with the brakes thrown on against its large red-painted wheels.

On the right, the blues and greens and grays continue in wall hangings and at least one framed print, but his gaze lands with a thud onto something gray and gigantic, that looks very much like the offspring of a sofa and several futons. Square-shaped and draped with half a dozen blankets that he can make out, it’s a low thing that seems to have been thrown right onto the floor without so much as a by-your-leave, decked out with pillows and books and, not at all a surprise, a sleek super-thin laptop perched on a rolling low table.

“So the rest of the rooms are camouflage,” he says, blinking at her.

She takes her spoon back and pops a huge dripping scoop of ice cream into her mouth, then gives him a thumbs-up.

“I have an image to keep up you know.”

“An image that most definitely does not include -- that,” and he points to something he recognizes in the far corner of the room with the strange bed. He recognizes the object because he’s got something like it in many of his own hideaways: a footlocker, in his case, armed-forces surplus, bulging at the seams with more than just first-aid paraphernalia.

In her room he can see that the plastic crate in the corner is similarly overstuffed, which is a feat considering that it must hold at least twenty liters.

He looks back at Jyn, who shrugs, and crosses the threshold to the bed, and sits down at the foot of it. “Most of the time that shit’s for my own personal use.”

“That’s what I say, too,” he says, and then: “May I sit?”

Permission granted, he nearly feels himself sink into the plush depths of the bed next to her, and accepts the spoon when she offers it back.

They trade the spoon back and forth for a while, getting to the bottoms of their pints in a less-than-hurried meander, and then when his teeth are already aching from the cold, he asks, “Do you know that I don’t know why I’m here?”

“Do you know your M paid me a visit a week ago?” is her riposte. “And fuck if I know why she was talking to me about you. Just because I save your life, and you save mine -- ”

“I don’t mind saving your life,” he says, and he’s amazed that the words come out as mildly as they do, when he feels that he’s reciting an order that’s been written into the very heart of him. “It’s a better world for me, when you’re out in it.”

“Likewise.” She drops the spoon into her empty pint. “But don’t you dare tell anyone I agreed with you on that. I will skin you.”

“Since I’ve seen you do it to someone else,” he says, with continuing equanimity, “I know with all my heart that you’re capable of such a thing.”

“And proud of it.” 

In the afternoon light, he is very, very tempted to reach out to the worry lines around her eyes.

And then she says, “I think she gave me your dossier. I haven’t read it. But what am I going to do with it?”

He stares at her for a long moment.

Fumbles in his pocket and produces a data drive. It has her name on it, impersonal dot-matrix printing on a small paper label taped onto one side. 

“Looks like she gave me yours.”

“There’s got to be a reason why.” Before his eyes, she hunches up, and seems to be resigning herself to something. “Ask me questions, if you like.”

“If you ask me questions as well,” he says, feeling the sting of something that’s not quite regret.

“Don’t you already know?”

He dares to touch her, then -- he places his free hand on her shoulder, and for some reason she leans into him, doesn’t even make the slightest attempt to push his hand away. “And what do you know about me?”

Her eyes are open wide, when she turns his way. She is focused on him. 

She’s been focused on him before, in the brief instants of fighting each other and fighting for each other’s lives, but she’s never looked at him like this, not even in the stolen hours of skin to skin.

The very idea steals his breath.

“Nothing,” she says. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“Just the facts,” he says. “That is all I know about you, as well.”

He watches her take the data drive from him.

And watches as she throws the little stick in the direction of an empty bowl, green decorated with ornate gold streaks, sitting next to the bed.

He tries on a smile. Says, “I’d rather you told me about yourself. Tell me what you feel safe telling me. Tell me when you feel safe telling me. I just had ice cream. My mind’s all cold.”

“Not to mention your hands.” And there is her smile, glorious and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Here are her hands taking his, moving them, until his hands are cupped just before her mouth and she breathes warm air over his skin -- warm air that hits like like a hammer-strike down every taut and singing nerve, warm air that makes him shiver all over and look at her and plead:

“Jyn.”

He doesn’t know what he’s asking her for.

Fortunately, she pulls him close.

He turns his face up to her and to her fingertips.

She is very, very gentle when she touches him, though the calluses in her skin catch on his stubble, on his scars, on the corners of his eyes and his mouth.

He’s torn between two conflicting impulses: he wants so very very badly to kiss her and to take her and to have her, and he equally wants so very very badly for her to take her time in learning him, in knowing who he is.

And either way, he’ll know a little more of her.

More than the way she fights and the way she dances -- some days he can’t even tell the difference between the two.

More than the way she takes apart a gun, or whets a knife, with her hands moving in small and contained and utterly purposeful arcs.

More than the way she walks and the way she speaks, because she walks in heels all the time, and talks to men and women who tower over her by inches as though they were on their knees before her.

He really does want to get down on his knees before her -- and he can, he can, he thinks deliriously -- and sliding off the bed to crawl closer to her is far too easy. Far too easy, and far too good, where he’s looking her straight in the eyes.

When she smiles, he feels like he wants to capture that image, that thought, that very idea of her in that moment.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

He blinks.

He hears himself ask, “Why are you asking me for permission?” 

“You always ask me for mine,” she says, “and I thought I’d return the favor.”

“If I gave you blanket permission will you kiss me whenever you want?”

He knows the sudden bright sharp light in her eyes, understands that she’s going to say what she says next: 

“Kiss me, Cassian -- I want you to be kissing me. Now and always.”

It goes without saying that he’s kissed her before. He’s kissed her because they were working, and he’s kissed her because they were temporarily not working, and he’s kissed her before, but this time he leans forward and this time she leans towards him -- this time they meet in the middle, freely, without anything else between them -- 

All the other nights and all the other hours fade away in the warmth and the light of this moment, as he wraps his hand around the back of Jyn’s head, as she’s toppling them both over onto her unmade bed, as he chases every kiss with a sigh and a gasp for breath and keeps going, keeps going, like he’ll never get enough of her -- 

One moment he’s braced over her, breathing in deep of the warm smell of lavender that’s rising up from her flushed skin; the next he can see the room’s walls rolling rapidly all around and now he’s on his back, looking at her mouth gone lush and soft from all their kisses. 

“I don’t know which one I like better,” he hears himself saying -- and why shouldn’t he say it? Maybe, just maybe, he can trust her to tell no one what it is they get up to, when it’s just the two of them in a bed. “You on top or -- not.”

The reward for that is the lines crinkling up in the corners of Jyn’s eyes, and the flash of mischief and sharp fang in her grin. “If you’re lucky you’ll get to -- you know -- compare and contrast. And maybe you’ll find you like one better, or both, or -- who knows? Maybe you can think of something else.”

There’s no help for him when those words make him rear up, make him reach for the hems of her over-sized t-shirt and the waistband of her jeans -- but he waits for her to nod her consent before he takes anything off, and when he takes everything off and she’s down to her own skin before him, atop him, over him.

He can’t get out of his own clothes quickly enough, and he honestly doesn’t care whether he’ll be able to wear the shirt or the jacket again -- he knows he heard something rip apart as she _helped_ him undress -- 

The touch of her sears him through to the very bone, and he’d be more than happy to throw himself onto the raging blaze of her, consumed by her over and over again, if she’d let him.

Listening to the sounds she makes, to the stuttering rhythm of her breaths, he wonders if she knows -- and then he’s completely overwhelmed by the taste of her sweat and the heat of her skin, by the textures of her. Here is the scar on her jawline, a taut faded silver slash, still slightly raised above the surrounding skin. Here is the star-shaped remnant of what must have been some kind of bullet wound, punched into her right flank. Long seams of scar tissue down her forearms, and layers upon layers of faded marks on her knees and around them. 

But here, too, is the skin that pebbles in the wake of his mouth and his tongue and his hands, the goosebumps rising on her, the sweet tight buds of her nipples. He noses around the deep indent of her navel, and lower, where the hot damp musk of her goes deeper and stronger with every breath he takes. 

He tries to tease her -- tries, and gets a stream of low filthy curses for his troubles, as he bites gently at her inner thighs, as he scrapes his stubble over her skin and feels her shake in response.

Back up her torso again, to the undersides of her breasts that still smell like these very sheets -- he scatters kisses all over her skin and if he keens, yearning to taste more and more of her, she shouts his name, increasingly breathless, increasingly pliant beneath him.

Down to the secret heat between her legs, the slickness of her -- she trembles as he runs a gentle fingertip over her folds, and he rubs that bit of damp off onto the crease between her torso and her thigh as he takes a deep breath and leans in, in, in, to the oceanic smell of her.

This isn’t the first time, but he hasn’t had a lot of time to do this, to just luxuriate in the feeling of her clenching around him, desperately needy already -- so he takes his time, stroking her in time with the rise and fall of her pleading cries, one and two and three fingers, until she’s shaking and the words and the curses have tailed off into sweet incoherence.

She’s utterly silent when she comes, her entire body frozen for a short infinity before she shivers herself apart.

There’s the first night, he thinks, muzzily, as he brings his hand up to his mouth and licks her juices off her skin, rolling them around on his tongue, the first night when they’d been doing everything in a blind frenzied hurry, not even a proper bed back then and the sheer inconvenience of not just his suit but hers, fumbling in a dark corner of a half-locked room, with his weapons and hers digging bruises into their skin.

And there’s this: the first orgasm, Jyn sloe-eyed and sweating all over and yanking him up for a filthy, filthy kiss, and the mouth on her, murmuring wicked promises against his lips: “Come on, come on me, come on me,” as her hand takes him in an unyielding grip and strokes, strokes, harder and harder and he’s seeing stars long before she lets him come. He’s blind with need and blinded by the lust of her, and he wants more, he wants so much more -- 

Kissing Jyn is something he never ever wants to stop doing, never ever wants to get tired of, and they take their time as they let their hearts slow down, as they come back down from those perilous gorgeous highs, and he whispers to her in all the languages he knows -- and she responds to him, word for word, and some languages he’s only ever heard and never spoken: who would have thought that she was fluent in Cree? He wonders at the sounds falling from her lips, at the fact that her mother had known how to speak twenty languages and was nearly a native speaker of seven of them.

He lets her kiss those sounds, those words, into his skin: the bruises dotting his ribs don’t hurt at all, not when they’ve flowered in the wake of her mouth, of her teeth -- the gently possessive touch of her, skittering over his skin where he’s desperately sensitive to the heat of her.

She’s the one who gets up on her hands and knees when he’s ready for her, and he can’t help but groan, and cover her body with his, the two of them touching from the shoulders on down, fingers entwined on the sweat-stained sheets, their bodies rocking together in a primal rhythm, familiar and yet so incredibly new. 

He can’t get enough of her skin against his; he never wants this to end, thrusting again and again into her where she’s pushing back against him, the relentless tide of pleasure overwhelming him once again until there’s nowhere else to go but to the edge, over the edge, wide-eyed with his shout gone entirely silent in his throat -- 

She grits out his name and he feels her as she comes and comes and comes, a handful of her hair in his hand, not to pull, never that -- only to feel the climax that shocks through her.

He must pull out of her, and she must rearrange their bodies some way or another, because when he comes back completely to himself, she’s holding him close: her body spooned protectively around him, and her breaths slowly growing less ragged in his ear.

He leans back into her, and says it again: “What you want to tell me, Jyn. In your own time.”

“If you tell me things, too. Things about yourself,” she murmurs, and he can hear the words, he can feel the quiet rumble of them in his chest, and he’d hold them if he could. 

He keeps her hand over his heart instead, as he falls unresisting into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the penultimate rebelcaptainprompts story T____T *hearts*
> 
> Written for Prompt Nineteen: "in another universe" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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